New e-MFP Youth Financial Inclusion Action Group publication

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"More Inclusive Finance for Youth: Scalable and Sustainable Delivery Models for Financial and Non-Financial Services" has just been released by the e-MFP Youth Financial Inclusion Action Group. This edition builds and expands on the 2012 e-MFP publication on youth financial inclusion, which laid out the state of the field in Youth financial services and offered key insights in program design and implementation. At that time, the combined outreach from 13 financial service providers documented in the publication added to just over 100,000 youth receiving services. There was little known about the potential sustainability of the services since most of the projects were in their early years of implementation.

In this second publication focused on youth financial inclusion, the e-MFP Youth Financial Inclusion Action Group agreed to hone in on youth financial services that are integrated with non-financial services. Over the past decade there has been a surge in investment to advance youth financial inclusion, with various organizations around the world testing and evaluating a variety of financial instruments targeting young people in low-income countries. The majority of the projects have incorporated a non-financial component, mainly financial education or business and vocational training, aimed at further strengthening young people's financial capability and business skills. The projects have resulted in numerous publications analyzing policies, business case arguments and impact. Some of the publications are in the form of technical guides that provide step-by-step practical guidance for designing financial products and incorporating non-financial components.

Most of the initiatives, including the ones documented in this publication, have received significant external grants, primarily from private foundations. With many subsidies coming to an end, there is a need to determine how those services, over time, can be continued and replicated with little or no external funding. In addition, the diversity of the projects in context, types of Youth financial services and non-financial services, and delivery mechanisms, calls for a synthesis of common factors that may contribute to an effective integration approach. This edition includes case studies that have a combined outreach of over a half million youth and offer insights on common factors that enable or prevent financial service providers in offering integrated services sustainably and at scale.

The objective of this publication is to provide guidance to Financial Services Providers, youth serving organizations, donors and government authorities that want to advance youth financial inclusion by analyzing and compiling what is known to date on scaling up financial products along with NFS and assessing the potential for long-term sustainability.